SALLY TAYLOR: FOLK-ROCK DAUGHTER ROYALE

When Sally Taylor was 8, her mother gave her a journal she had kept in her teen-age years. Sally devoured the journal and learned something she needed to know about the act of expressing who you are.

"It brought me to another place in life where I felt OK," Taylor said. "I had shared secret thoughts with her."

Taylor's degree is in anthropology, but her pedigree may be more important for her. The daughter of folk-rock royalty, James Taylor and Carly Simon, Taylor has honey in her voice, writes reflective and personal lyrics, loves performing and very independently is making a name of her own.

Taylor and her band perform Saturday at the Bootheel Youth Museum in Malden, Mo. Taylor will follow a set by local musician Mary McBride. Only 135 tickets are available.

She chose music over a career in anthropology but says she uses her college training every day. "It's the study of human nature, and I observe the audience to see what information to give them," she said in an interview from Boulder, Colo., where she lives. "I have an anthropological and poetic mind."

Performing and writing are her passions. A road journal on her website, www.sallytaylor.com, updates fans on the band's adventures and doubtless soon will include a description of the Malden performance.

Taylor's first CD, "Tomboy Bride," was a homemade affair cut shortly after her move to Boulder. Her newest, "Apt. #6S," is more polished and but retains Taylor's penchant for writing about all kinds of relationships.

Apt. #6S was her mother's address in Manhattan. As a child, she thought the apartment number was pronounced "success." After her parents split up, she spent weekdays with her mother and weekends with her father on Martha's Vineyard.

Big record labels have offered contracts but Taylor isn't interested in "that glittery sort of star fame thing sort of success."

"My parents always told me to follow my heart," Taylor said. "Do what makes you happy. That's what success is.

"My dreams were to make music and perform music, to be myself in that music, to be representing exactly what my soul told me to do."

When her parents started out, record companies nourished developing artists. The business is more cutthroat today, a high-stakes gamble that one of 50 bands being promoted will strike gold.

"That's not my idea of artist development," Taylor said. "My concern is, How am I going to make the world a better place with my music?"

She chose to start her own label and promote herself by hitting the road. "I took my machete and cut down my own path," she said gleefully.

Concert dates after the Bootheel Youth Museum include The Parish in New Orleans, Exit/In in Nashville, the House of Blues in Cambridge, Mass, and the famed Bitter End in New York City.

Unlike her mother, who suffers famously from stage fright, Taylor loves expressing herself in front of people. She remembers being scared the first time she was brought onstage at 3 or 4 to sing with her mother and having a very different reaction -- "I am not ever getting off stage" -- once she was there.

Her brother, Ben, also is a musician and sings backup on some of the songs on her CD.

Taylor doesn't have children yet but knew early on that she wants them. At 8, she began writing in a journal to her own daughter. "I want her to know everything she has experienced is fully cool," Taylor said. She wants her daughter to know that she had some of the same thoughts and feelings.

"You can miss that about your parents," she said, "especially at an early age."

If you go

Who: Sally Taylor

When: 7 p.m. Saturday

Where: Bootheel Youth Museum, 700 N. Douglass, Malden

How much: $15

How to contact: 276-3600